Quinceañera: Girls' Coming-of-Age Rituals in Contemporary Havana, Cuba

Abstract

In this chapter, the author explores the phenomenon of flamboyant girls' fifteenth birthday parties (quinceañeras) as a gender–specific ritual. The author discusses the ways that this life–cycle ritual celebrates the girl's entry into sexual adulthood, portrays her as an object of heterosexual desire, while simultaneously granting the girls ritual and exotic agency. The author concludes that contemporary quinceañera rituals also reflect the island's recent political and economic turn toward a more capitalist society and displays the growing racialized and gendered inequalities on the island. ; Peer reviewed